Katrin Groß

Succeeding in a man’s world

The daughter of a mechanic, Katrin Groß has engineering in her blood. Today she’s 24 years old, a qualified mechanical engineer, and employed as a design engineer at thyssenkrupp.

Today she’s 24 years old, a qualified mechanical engineer, and employed as a design engineer at thyssenkrupp. She likes to get to work early, where she develops dies for the auto industry and painstakingly searches for solutions. She’s currently working with other design engineers on a die for a tailgate. For a car fan like her, it’s a really exciting project. In fact she’s known to love cars so much that she won’t allow anyone else behind the wheel of her own.

She’s worked for the Division Forming Dies in Lockweiler since 2015, the only woman among nine men. “I’m used to it. It was the same on my degree course, where there were eight women to 100 men.” So she was and still is one of the few women in mechanical engineering. But that doesn’t bother her, though in the early days she had to fight for recognition from her older colleagues. But that’s all in the past now. The team really values her specialist skills. Her coworkers also appreciate her plant-growing skills which help make the office a nicer place to work.

“After all, thyssenkrupp is like a home from home. Here at the Lockweiler plant everyone knows everyone else, we’re one big family. Even after work.” People sometimes gather after work for a barbecue or to go on a hike together. And what else does an engineer do in her spare time? She likes riding her horse, Lavinia, or volunteering as a trainer, dancer and board member of the local carnival association.

In a few years Katrin Groß would like to work in management and have more contact with the design offices. She loves designing things herself, as she did as a student. She once developed a device for catching windfall apples which was subsequently put to good use in a local fruit orchard.